Evaluating the Effectiveness of Live Peer Assessment as a Vehicle for The Development of Higher

251 Pages·2017·4.77 MB·English

by  Steve Bennett

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Live Peer Assessment as a Vehicle for The
Development of Higher Order Practice in Computer Science Education

Steve Bennett

School of Computer Science
University of Hertfordshire

Thesis submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
April 2017

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Declaration

I certify that the work submitted is my own and that any material derived or quoted from the
published or unpublished work of other persons has been duly acknowledged.

Student Full Name: Steve Bennett
Student Registration Number: 00011514

______________________________
th
Date: 24 April 2017

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Acknowledgements

In completing this study, I would first wish to give huge thanks to my supervisor Dr Trevor Barker who
encouraged me to enroll for a PhD in the first place, and supported me through the whole process.
Through him I could see the bigger pictruatre oand t hceo nthceinngts of genuine significance rather
than the details I would sometimes get bHoeg wgeads adloswo na ignr.e atu ceo tlole taegach with for
many years and I hope I have picked up some of the wisdomh aasan ldw caoyns geniality that he
demonasterd .
I would also like to give thanks to the University of Hertfordshire generally and particularly my own
department of Computer Science. Through the University generally I was lucky enough to participate in
the Blended Learning Unit whicht igmaev ea nmde e tnhceo uragement to try out new things. There I
would particularly likeP troo ftehsasnPoker t er Bullen and David Kraithman fo r their support.
Then I’d like to thank my own department of Computer Science for giving me a time allowance for this
research. Particularly, I’d like to thank colleagues who supported me in different ways along the way.
Firstly, I’d like to thank Professor Amanda Jefferies who first invited me onto the Cable (Change
Academy for Blended Learning Enhancement) project during the 2009-10 academic year where the
practices covered in this thesis were first piloted. The purchase of the first 80 EVS clickers then led
directly to this thesis! Secondly I’d like to thank Dr Mariana Lilley for being a supportive colleague on a
number of different courses and programs of study where I have been encouraged to try out many
different approaches and with whom I have been able to discuss the various issues that came up.
Without the anticipation of such support and without an environment in which natural curiosity and
experimentation were encouraged I would not have had the ability to try things out to the extent I have.
I would also like to thank my parents, and particularly my mother for noticing my academic tendencies
in the first place and encouraging them! And finally, I’d like to thank my girlfriend Vanessa for being
such a tower of strength during this period of the writing of this thesis and being such a fabulous person
to return to after a day in the office.

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Abstract

This thesoisn cerns a longitudinal study of the practice of Live Peer Assessment on two University
courses in Computer SBcyi eLnivcee .P e er Assessment I mean a pr-calcatsisc ec oolfl ewchtiovele
marking using electronic sdteuvdiecenst aorft edfaecmtso nstratead c lians s or lecture theatre with
instantaneous aggregated results displayed oenly s acfrteeern e iamchm gerdaidaitng. d Tehciiss ios n
radically different from his-taosrsiecassl mpeeenrt in universities which has primarily been
asynchronous procesisn go off mstuadernkts’ work by small subsets of the cohort (e.g. 1 student
artefact is marked by <3 fellow students). Live Peer Assessment takes place in public, is marked by (as
far as practically possible) the whole cohort, and results are instantaneous.
This study observes this practice, first on a level 4 course in E-Media Design where students’ main
assignment is a multimedia CV (or resume) and secondly on a level 7 course in Multimedia Specification
Design and Production where students produce a multimedia information artefact in both prototype and
final versions. In both cases, students learned about these assignments from reviewing works done by
previous students in Live Peer Evaluation events where they were asked to collectively publicly mark
those works according to the same rubrics that the tutors would be using. In this level 4 course, this was
used to help students get a better understanding of the marks criteria. In the level 7 course, this goal
was also pursued, but was also used for the peer marking of students’ own work.
Among the major findings of this study are:
 In the level 4 course student attainment in the final assessment improved on average by 13%
over 4 iterations of the course, with very marked increase among students in the lower
percentiles
 The effectiveness of Live Peer Assessment in improving student work comes from
o Raising the profile of the marking rubric
o Establishing a repertoire of example work
o Modelling the “noticing” of salient features (of quality or defect) enabling students to
self-monitor more effectively
 In the major accepted measure of peer-assessment reliability (correlation between student
awarded marks and tutor awarded marks) Live Peer Assessment is superior to traditional peer
assessment. That is to say, students mark more like tutors when using Live Peer Assessment
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 In the second major measure (effect-size) which calculates if students are more strict or
generous than tutors, (where the ideal would be no difference), Live Peer Assessment is broadly
comparable with traditional peer assessment but this is susceptible to the conditions under
which it takes place
 The reason for the better greater alignment of student and tutor marks comes from the training
sessions but also from the public nature of the marking where individuals can compare their
marking practice with that of the rest of the class on a criterion by criterion basis
 New measures proposed in this thesis to measure the health of peer assessment events
comprise: Krippendorf’s Alpha, Magin’s Reciprocity Matrix, the median pairwise tutor student
marks correlation, the Skewness and Kurtosis of the distribution of pairwise tutor student
marking correlations
 Recommendations for practice comprise that:
o summative peer assessment should not take place under conditions of anonymity but
that very light conditions of marking competence should be enforced on student
markers (e.g. >0.2 correlation between individual student marking and that of tutors)
o That rubrics can be more suggestive and colloquial in the conditions of Live Peer
Assessment because the marking criteria can be instantiated in specific examples of
student attainment and therefore the criteria may be less legalistically drafted because
a more holistic understanding of quality can be communicated

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Table of Contents
Declarat .i.o..n.................................................................................................. .i.i ....
Acknowledgem ...e..n..t..s.................................................................................... i.i.i ...
Abstra .c..t...................................................................................................... .i.v .....
List of Tab ..l.e..s............................................................................................... x..i ..
List of Figu ..r.e..s.............................................................................................x..i.i .i
Chapter 1.Introduct .i.o..n................................................................................ .1. ......
Chapter 2.Peer Assessment a-nFdo rFweaerdd: Literature . .R..e..v..i.e..w........................... 7. .....
2.1 Met-aStudies of Peer Asse ..s.s..m...e..n..t....................................................... 8. ........
2.1. 1 Peer Assessment between Students in vCeorlsleitgie–e s(sK eaitnh dTo pUpninig) ........... 8
2.1.2 User of Self Peer and Co Assessment in Higher Education - (Dochy, Segers, & Sluijsmans) 8
2.1.3 Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Peer and
Teacher Marks ((Falchikov and Goldfinch) ........................................................................................... 9
2.1.4 Effective peer assessment processes: Research findings and future directions (Van
Zundert et al., 2010) ........................................................................................................................... 11
2.1.5 Peer assessment in the digital age: a meta-analysis comparing peer and teacher ratings (Li
et al) 12
2.2 Synthesising the Findings ............................................................................................................ 13
2.2.1 Perception of Fairness......................................................................................................... 14
2.2.2 Measures of Accuracy ......................................................................................................... 14
2.2.3 Claimed Effects .................................................................................................................... 16
2.2.4 Logistics and Constellations ................................................................................................ 17
2.3 Peer Asssessment in Computer Science ..................................................................................... 18
2.3.1 Peer Marking – Study by Sitthiworachart and Joy .............................................................. 18
2.3.2 John Hamer and Aropa ....................................................................................................... 20
2.4 Peer Assessment Technology...................................................................................................... 22
2.5 The Design Crit ............................................................................................................................ 22
2.6 The Studio Method in Computer Science ................................................................................... 24
2.7 Exemplar Based Assessment ....................................................................................................... 25
2.8 Relevance to the Proposed Study ............................................................................................... 27
2.9 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 28
Chapter 3. Multimedia Specification Design and Production ............................................................... 30
3.1 Module Aims and Learning Outcomes ........................................................................................ 30
3.2 Course Schedule .......................................................................................................................... 31
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3.3 Introducing Live Peer Assessment .............................................................................................. 33
3.3.1 Logistics ............................................................................................................................... 35
3.3.2 Peer Assessment Marking ................................................................................................... 38
3.4 The Data, Measures, and their Interpretation ............................................................................ 39
3.5 Multimedia Specification Assignment 2 ..................................................................................... 42
3.5.1 Student Marking: Correlations and Effect Sizes .................................................................. 42
3.5.2 Assignment 2: Measures of Agreement .............................................................................. 46
3.5.3 Assignment 2: Pairwise Correlation Measures ................................................................... 47
3.5.4 Inter-Rater Reliability .......................................................................................................... 49
3.6 Multimedia Specification Assignment 4 ..................................................................................... 52
3.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 57
Chapter 4. The Experience of Peer Assessment on a Masters Course ................................................. 59
4.1 Factors Affecting Higher Student/Tutor correlations ................................................................. 59
4.2 Focus Group ................................................................................................................................ 62
4.2.1 Students’ Initial Feelings about Peer Assessment .............................................................. 63
4.2.2 Fairness ............................................................................................................................... 64
4.2.3 Reciprocity .......................................................................................................................... 65
4.2.4 Bias ...................................................................................................................................... 67
4.2.5 Marking Competence .......................................................................................................... 68
4.2.6 Tutor Influence .................................................................................................................... 68
4.2.7 Training ............................................................................................................................... 71
4.2.8 Peer Influence ..................................................................................................................... 73
4.2.9 Student Experience ............................................................................................................. 75
4.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 76
Chapter 5. E-Media Design – Longitudinal Analysis.............................................................................. 80
5.1 The Course and Differences from the Previous Study ................................................................ 80
5.2 E-Media Design: The Module ...................................................................................................... 81
5.3 First Iteration with Clickers and Exemplar Marking: 2010-11 .................................................... 83
5.4 Second Iteration with Clickers and Exemplar Marking: 2011-12 ................................................ 86
5.5 Third Iteration with Clickers and Exemplar Marking: 2012-13 ................................................... 92
5.6 Fourth Iteration with Clickers and Exemplar Marking: 2013-14 ................................................. 97
Chapter 6. E-Media Design Course – The Map of Improvement ........................................................ 106
6.1 The Marking of the Final Assignment ....................................................................................... 110
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6.2 The Nature and Effects of Rubrics ............................................................................................ 117
6.2.1 Research Relating to Rubric Design .................................................................................. 119
Chapter 7. Analysis of Voting in the BSc Course over the Years ......................................................... 123
7.1 Limitations of the Data.............................................................................................................. 123
7.2 Comparison of Inter-Rater Reliability using Krippendorf’s Alpha over the course ................... 125
7.3 Time Taken to Make Judgements Between Grade Bearing and Non Grade Bearing Evaluation
Sessions ................................................................................................................................................. 128
7.4 2011-12 Iteration ...................................................................................................................... 133
7.4.1 Details of Student and Tutor Marking .............................................................................. 133
7.5 More In Depth Look at Voting Patterns in the Final Year ......................................................... 138
7.5.1 The Training Set ................................................................................................................ 138
7.5.2 Levels of Participation and Agreement in The Rehearsal Session .................................... 140
7.5.3 Levels of Participation and Agreement in the Final Session ............................................. 142
7.5.4 Which Criteria Required the Most Time ........................................................................... 145
7.6 Critical Success Factors ............................................................................................................. 148
Chapter 8. Internalisation ................................................................................................................... 151
8.1 Reflective Practice and Communities of Practice ..................................................................... 152
8.2 Applying a Reflective Practice Framework to the Multimedia CV ............................................ 153
8.3 Focus Group .............................................................................................................................. 154
8.3.1 The Centrality of the Rubric .............................................................................................. 155
8.3.2 The Impact of the Collective Marking Experience ............................................................ 157
8.3.3 Solving Problems ............................................................................................................... 159
8.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 164
Chapter 9. Inspiration ......................................................................................................................... 167
9.1 Comparison of Use of Colour by 12-13 and 13-14 Cohorts ...................................................... 167
9.2 Examples of a Curved Navigation Bar ....................................................................................... 170
9.3 Use of Inverted Rounded Rectangles for Corners..................................................................... 174
9.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 177
Chapter 10. Summary and Discussion .................................................................................................. 179
10.1 Logistical Recommendations: Preparation ............................................................................... 179
10.2 Anonymity vs Accountability: Libertarian vs Authoritarian ...................................................... 180
10.3 Debriefing .................................................................................................................................. 182
10.4 Benefits to the Student ............................................................................................................. 183
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10.5 Surface vs Deep Learning .......................................................................................................... 184
10.6 Further Research ....................................................................................................................... 186
10.6.1 Social Equity in Computer Science Education ................................................................... 186
10.6.2 Potential for Use in MOOCs .............................................................................................. 189
10.7 The Value of Live Peer Assessment ........................................................................................... 193
Chapter 11. Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 195
11.1 RQ1 How might EVS and LPA be designed and implemented? ................................................ 195
11.1.1 What kinds of rubrics or marking sheets are best used? .................................................. 196
11.1.2 What practices can be used to enhance the reliability of marks in this modality? .......... 197
11.1.3 What considerations should be borne in mind when choosing exemplars for students to
mark? 198
11.2 How might EVS and LPA be evaluated? .................................................................................... 198
11.2.1 Can LPA improve marks in an assignment? ...................................................................... 198
11.2.2 If marks improve in an assignment, how is that improvement distributed across the
cohort? 199
11.2.3 What measures exist to quantify the success of an LPA event? ....................................... 200
11.2.4 Are students generally competent enough to mark their peers under these conditions and
are they more or less so when compared to more traditional forms of peer assessment? ............ 201
11.3 What are the benefits and limitations of using LPA and EVS? .................................................. 203
11.3.1 What pedagogical benefits does this kind of peer assessment bring with it? ................. 203
11.3.2 Do students become more competent in judging quality in the work of others and in their
own work?......................................................................................................................................... 203
11.3.3 What are the limitations of the technique? ..................................................................... 204
11.4 How does LPA Work? ................................................................................................................ 205
11.4.1 Does the act of assessing impact on the way students’ set about their own academic
work? 205
11.4.2 What might be the explanation for the effects claimed for LPA in this study? ................ 206
11.4.3 What are the students’ opinion and feelings about the process? .................................... 206
11.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 206
Appendices ..................................................................................................................................................... I
References ................................................................................................................................................. I
Ethics Approvals ...................................................................................................................................... VII
Ethics Protocol: 1112/51 ........................................................................................................................ VIII
Ethics Protocol: COM/SF/UH/00014 ........................................................................................................ IX
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Rubrics........................................................................................................................................................... X
2010T Rubric ............................................................................................................................................. X
2010S Rubric .......................................................................................................................................... XIII
2011TE Rubric ........................................................................................................................................ XIV
2011 TS Rubric ..................................................................................................................................... XVIII
2011TM RUBRIC ..................................................................................................................................... XXI
2012S Rubric ......................................................................................................................................... XXII
2012TM Rubric ..................................................................................................................................... XXIV
2013S Rubric ......................................................................................................................................... XXV
2013T Rubric ...................................................................................................................................... XXVIII
List of Publications Related to Work Done in this Thesis ......................................................................... XXIX

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